Raccoons!

When I started officially working "in the museum field" five or so years ago, I stopped making art at the same time. It wasn't a coincidence. I find it hard to go back and forth between a day job and art (or writing, which I kind of lump into the same category). My camera got packed away along with my enlarger*. Chemicals** sat on shelves, reacted, leaked from bottles. Rolls of exposed film*** lay forgotten in drawers. But with unemployment looming, all of a sudden I'm feeling creative again. Last week, in a fit of optimism, I loaded up my camera with some Ilford and headed to the local cemetery to shoot some creepy lady sculptures I had seen there the week before. I deliberately left my digital camera at home so I wouldn't be tempted to use it.

Of course, that turned out to be a big mistake. While roaming the cemetery with my friend Robin, we happened upon a family of raccoons. They were very curious about us, which I guess is the difference between city raccoons and country raccoons. Luckily, Robin brought along her digital camera and took the following photo:



* Equipment used in olden times to make photographs from film (see below).
** Liquid potions used by magicians to make pretty pictures appear on photographic paper.
*** This crazy old stuff once put in cameras to record images.